While a Hindu-Muslim (HM) polarisation — courtesy the Muzaffarnagar riots — may seem a sure shot formula for boosting the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) electoral fortunes in western Uttar Pradesh, upsetting these calculations could be another phenomenon: what political observers here term ‘DM,’ or Dalit-Muslim consolidation.
The best example of where ‘DM’ is being played out is probably Saharanpur, where Muslims make up over six lakh of the constituency’s total 16-lakh electorate.
Both the Congress and Samajwadi Party (SP) have fielded Muslims here: the former Imran Masood and the latter his cousin, Shazan Masood.
The Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) candidate, on the other hand, is Jagdish Rana, a Rajput who happens to be the sitting MP. Despite Muslims being the largest community, the general feeling is that the real fight in Saharanpur is between Rana and the BJP’s Raghav Lakhanpal Sharma, a Brahmin.
While the BJP is obviously backing on the ‘HM’ factor and a Narendra Modi ‘wave,’ the BSP’s strategy is built around leveraging its five-lakh-odd Dalit ‘vote bank’ to attract Muslims.
The presence of some 80,000 voters from Jagdish Rana’s own community — and the BJP denying a ticket to Suresh Rana, a Rajput and MLA from neighbouring Thanabhawan implicated in the riots — only helps matters.
An ‘HM’ polarisation, under the circumstances, is seen as working more in the BSP’s favour, rather than the BJP’s.
The possibility of Muslims not being averse to voting for a BSP ‘Hindu’ candidate comes through conversations with members of the community. “We will vote for the party best placed to defeat BJP and Narendra Modi,” said Mohammad Rizwan, a local timber dealer.
Interestingly, many students at Darul Uloom — the famous Islamic seminary at Deoband here — Business Line informally interacted with, suggested the likelihood “of a Hindu winning this time,” without openly stating they would vote in that direction. The BSP fancies its chances similarly via the ‘DM’ factor in Bijnor, which has an estimated four lakh-plus Muslims, 2.5-3 lakh Dalits, 2-2.5 lakh Jats and one lakh Gujjars. Its candidate, Malook Nagar, is a Gujjar.
Both BSP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) are currently aggressively wooing Muslims. Their common pitch is that they are the ones with the maximum ‘base votes’ for Muslims to combine with and defeat the BJP.
Although the BJP has given the ticket to a Jat, Bhartendu Singh (also charged in the riots), the community by and large seem inclined towards the RLD, which has fielded actor Jaya Prada. The one loser from all this, ironically, is said to be the Samajwadi Party’s Muslim candidate Shahnawaz Rana, proprietor of the Hindi daily Shah Times. His father’s brother Kadir Rana is, incidentally, BSP’s candidate from Muzaffarnagar.
Block votingThe same game of getting Muslims to vote as a block is being played out in Meerut. BJP’s candidate there, Rajendra Agarwal, won in 2009 with a margin of just over 47,000 votes. BJP, then, had an alliance with the RLD.
This time, RLD has tied up with the Congress, which has given a ticket to yet another cine star, Nagma.
In a pure ‘HM’ polarisation fight, the BJP would be a winner since Muslims account for only a third of the electorate, and the BSP and SP candidates are both Muslims.
But in the event of Muslims voting tactically and not splitting their votes, anything is possible in a State where they are not numerically small either.